The Djinn (8 page)

I lit a
cigarette. “What’s he working on now? Giving Manhattan back to the Indians?”

“Manhattan was
bought. Most of the treasures of the Middle East were stolen.”

I coughed. “I
don’t see that it makes any difference where antiquities are. As long as people
can see them, what does it matter?”

She sipped her
coffee. “It’s a question of national heritage. How would you feel if some
Iranian took the Statue of Liberty and set it up at the head of the Persian
Gulf?”

“Very offended.
I’ve lived in the city most of my life, and
I haven’t had the chance to visit it yet.

If I can never
find the time to get out to Liberty Island, how the hell am I going to find the
time to get out to the Persian Gulf?”

“Well,” said
Anna, “you get the general picture of what Professor Qualt is trying to do. He
believes that it’s important for countries to be aware of their heritage and to
have their treasures within their own boundaries. He says it gives a nation
historic continuity.”

I sniffed.
“Right now I could do with some Irish coffee continuity. Are you ready for
another?”

“I’ll be
tipsy.”

“Of course you
will. Otherwise, what’s the point of drinking them?”

When dinner was
over, we relaxed in the motel’s lounge with a quite postprandial drink. There
was some spark of attraction between us, but both of us were completely aware
that we weren’t going to share a bed that night. There were too many ghosts to
think about, and apart from that, we were the kind of people who needed to get
to know each other a little better. We were circling around each other’s
personalities like two curious cats, but we weren’t quite ready to start
rubbing noses. I definitely had the feeling that Anna was the kind of girl who,
once aroused and interested, would need a great deal of careful and sensitive
handling. I wasn’t sure that I was prepared to commit myself to that kind of
relationship just at that moment. I had only recently finished a long and
harrowing entanglement with Alison, and I was enjoying the slightly morbid
peace and solitude that only final separation can bring.

“Are you going
to tell my fortune now?” asked Anita.

“Certainly.
Fortunes told, dreams delved, that’s what I’m
here for. Let’s start with the wine test.”

“The wine test?”

“It’s an old
Israeli method or telling fortunes. Watch. I’ll take this saucer and pour a
little water into it. Then I want you to dip your fingers in your glass of wine
and let the drops fall from the tips of your fingers into the water. See-they
form a cloudy shape.
A kind of three-dimensional Rorschach
blot.
Now, what does that remind you off?”

Anna bent down
and peered at the swirling fog of red wine in the saucer. It spread across the
surface in quite a symmetrical pattern,
then
it seemed
to hover motionless for a moment before mingling irretrievably with the water.

“Do you know,”
she said, “I could have sworn-”

“What?”

“Well, it seems
ridiculous, but it looked like a jar.”

I reached for
another cigarette. “I think you’ve got jars on the brain. Let’s forget the
wine, and I’ll give you the Tarot cards. They’re ancient Egyptian, so if there
are any antique Middle Eastern pots in your life, they should show up in
these.”

I took my
well-thumbed Tarot cards out of my coat pocket, shuffled them, and began to
work out Anna’s future prospects. There was nothing spectacular there.
A marriage in the middle to distant future.
No sign of great
wealth or fame.
A bereavement
.
Some
arguments over law or contracts.
However, when I was about to turn over
the last card-the card that would tell Anna her immediate fortune-I hesitated.

“What’s the
matter?”

I frowned.
“Er... I think I’ve done it wrong.”

“What’s wrong
about it?”

“I... er...
didn’t shuffle them enough.”

Anna looked at
me seriously. “Harry, what’s the matter? Why have you stopped?”

Without even
turning up the next card, I said, “I believe I know what the next card is going
to be. I’m sure of it, in fact.”

She smiled
uneasily. “But don’t you always know? You are a clairvoyant, aren’t you?”

I lowered my
eyes.
“Sort of.
I mean, I have a modest gift.”

“Then-”

“Then nothing.
I’ve never known before what a card’s going
to be. I’ve guessed, but I’ve never known.”

“Don’t be so
worried about it. You said yourself that telling fortunes was like servicing
cars. The more you do, the better you get. Perhaps all your practice is paying
off. You’re a full-fledged mechanic.”

I laid the
Tarot pack on the low glass-topped table without revealing the top card,

“That top
card,” I said, “is the Star. It shows a woman emptying jars into a stream. Its
meaning is usually interpreted as loss or deprivation. In some ways, the loss
is often more tragic than any of the losses that the Death card predicts. On
the Death card, Death is riding into town on his black charger, and he’s being
greeted as an inevitable part of life. But the Star shows life forces being
spilled away for no reason at all.”

“Out of jars?”
whispered Anna.

“That’s right.
Out of jars.”

For a little
while, Anna sat there with her drink in her hand staring at the Tarot deck and
saying nothing. Then, hesitantly, she reached forward and picked up the top
card. She turned it around and looked at it.

“You see,” I
said.
“The Star.”

Anna shook her
head. “You’re wrong. It’s not the Star at all.”

I couldn’t
understand it. The card had given me such powerful and magnetic sensations that
I could hardly believe she was telling me the truth.

“Let me see
that,” I said, taking the card from her.

It wasn’t the
Star; it was worse. It was the Ten of Swords. The picture on the card depicts a
man lying dead on
a deserted
seashore, under a
darkening sky, with ten long swords piercing his body. His head is turned away,
although it is obvious that one of the swords is stuck right into his face.

On an impulse,
I picked up the next card in the pack and turned it over. It was the Star. I
laid the two cards side by side on the table and sat looking at them for a long
time. For some reason I couldn’t understand, it appeared that I was being given
a warning by the Tarot. It had happened to me before, and I had felt just as
creepy and just as uncertain about it then. Now, with these two cards
reinforcing each other’s mystical message of fate, loss, and injury, I was
being informed by whatever influences surround the occult that I was treading
dangerous ground-and that further steps along the path I was pursuing might
result in tragedy.

“Do you believe
it?” asked Anna.

I shrugged. “I
don’t know what to think. These cards are very strange and temperamental; it
doesn’t pay to mess around with them unless you know what you’re doing. In effect,
they’re telling me to drop this jar business.”

“But you’re not
going to leave your godmother alone with the jar, are you? I mean, you can’t”

I shuffled my
cards and put them away. “Anna, she may be my godmother, but I don’t know her
that well. Not well enough to start taking full responsibility for everything
she does. Today was the first time I’ve seen her in three years. You couldn’t
call us bosom pals.”

“But what about that man in the robe?”

I raised my arm
to call the waiter. All of a sudden, I felt I needed another drink.

“Anna,” I told
her, “we don’t even know it was a man. It could have been a friend of
Marjorie’s in a bathrobe. Maybe he or she just came to the door to watch us go.
We were all tired. It could have been a mistake. But i£ it makes you feel any
better, we can go around there tomorrow and check up.”

The waiter
arrived-a lugubrious soul with a maroon jacket and a smile like a hotel coat
hanger. I ordered a bourbon and branch water; Anna asked for a Coke.

“I think you’re
as frightened as I am,” said Anna provocatively, as we waited for our drinks.

I didn’t say
anything at all. I simply smiled the mysterious Erskine smile, and let her
think what she liked. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what to think. In
some respects, I was terrified. I knew there was something very wrong with that
jar, and I didn’t relish the prospect of trying to get it out of the turret
But
on the other hand, the legends and warnings seemed so
coincidental and obscure that it was hard to be very convinced. At the moment
my number one working theory was that Max Greaves had somehow become mentally
deranged and had invested the jar with all kinds of strange qualities of his
own maniac invention. I didn’t know what to believe about the music, but it was
quite possible that there were freak chimneys or cracks in the fabric o£ an old
house like that, and that on certain occasions the wind happened to build up a
warbling vibration.
Perhaps if we spoke to Dr. Jarvis, then
had a word with this Professor Qualt character, we might get closer to the
truth.
As my dear departed mother used to say, “There is no such thing
as a mystery. Someone, somewhere, always knows the answer.”

I called at Dr.
Jarvis’s house at half-past nine the next morning. It promised to be another
fine day, although it was breezier, and thick white clouds were tumbling out of
the west. Anna stayed in the car while I walked up Dr. Jarvis’s neat brick
path, under the shade of an old elm, and rang his doorbell.

Dr. Jarvis’s
house was tucked away in the wealthier part of Hyannis, surrounded by elegant
yards, leafy walks, and traffic-free roads. It was a large white colonial home
of character and charm, and Dr. Jarvis, kindly but formal, lived up to its
grandeur and style.

His maid, a
short black girl in a crisp white apron, opened the door.
“Sir?”

“I’d like to
speak to Dr. Jarvis. Is he at home?”

“He’s having
his breakfast at the moment.”

“Could you tell
him it’s about Max
Greaves.
Tell him I know how Max
Greaves died.”

The maid looked
perplexed.
“Sir?”

“That’s all I
have to say. Tell Dr. Jarvis I know how Max Greaves died.”

The maid
frowned,
then
walked off along the corridor to what
was obviously the breakfast room. I heard quiet conversation, the movement of a
chair, and then Dr. Jarvis appeared, dabbing his mouth with a linen napkin. He
was a tall gray-haired man with rimless spectacles, a nose as sharp as a
shark’s fin, and a kindly stoop. He was immaculately dressed in a gray suit,
with a gold watch chain across his matching vest.

“Good morning,”
he said. “I’m afraid you’ve been confusing Lucinda. She does get confused.”

“I didn’t mean
to,” I told him. “My name is Harry Erskine. I’m Max’s godson.”

“Oh, yes. I
believe I saw you yesterday at his funeral. I hope you’ll accept my
condolences.”

“Thank you. I
didn’t mean to interrupt your breakfast, Dr. Jarvis, but Marjorie told me what
happened when Max died, and I’m kind of worried about the whole situation.”

“Worried? What
do you mean?”

I scratched my
head. “I don’t know exactly. It’s pretty hard to explain. But the way I see it,
something was bothering Max Greaves, and it seems to me that Marjorie might be
affected as well.”

Dr. Jarvis
looked serious. “Come inside,” he said. “You’d better have some coffee while I
finish my breakfast.”

I stepped
inside the elegant house, and Dr. Jarvis showed me to the breakfast room. It
was decorated in Adam green and white, and hung with oil paintings of seascapes
and rural scenes.

From the
polished oval table, we had a view of the wide rambling garden and the distant
blue line of the ocean.

The maid came
in with a fresh cup and poured me some coffee, and Dr. Jarvis, with surgical
precision, finished cutting and buttering his English muffins.

“You say
Marjorie might be affected as well?” asked Dr. Jarvis. “Do you know how?”

I put my cup
down. “It’s difficult to say at the moment. I don’t know how well you knew Max
or Marjorie, but I imagine you were pretty close. I mean, I guess you were
friends.”

Dr. Jarvis
nodded. “Indeed we were. My wife and I used to visit Winter Sails quite
frequently for dinner, up until the time that Max became unwell.”

“Unwell? I
don’t understand. Marjorie said there was nothing physically wrong with him.”

“There wasn’t,”
said Dr. Jarvis, “apart from.
high
blood pressure and
some minor prostate trouble. When I say ‘unwell,’ I mean he became nervous and
anxious and allowed his affairs to go downhill.”

“Did you ever
know why?” I asked. “Did Max ever confide in you?”

Dr. Jarvis
munched some muffin. “Max was never a forthright man at the best of times, as
you probably know yourself. All I know is that he felt a compulsion CD occupy
his days and his nights with a piece of antique Arabian pottery that he had
brought back from the Middle East”

“The jar,” I
said.
“The jar with the horses and the flowers.”

Dr. Jarvis
nodded. “That’s correct.” He rang a small silver bell for more coffee.

“Did Max ever
tell you why?”

“Why what?”

“Why he spent
his days and nights with the jar? I mean, what was he doing with the jar? It’s
locked in the turret at Winter Sails now. More than locked-it’s sealed in, with
two iron bars and sealing wax and God knows what else.”

“I know that,”
said Dr. Jarvis.

“And you don’t
think that’s strange?”